Orlando (film, 1992)

Naive and hopeful. Beautiful to look at. The Elizabethan era felt real. The rest of the movie looked and felt like a Terry Gilliam movie (in a positive way: it continued beautiful to look at, but took on an indicative manner: it no longer was the times and places of the narrative, it depicted them, sketched them, and this was the art of it.) The sex scene was only abstractly sexy (I hope that was the intention.) The relationship with the Khan felt powerfully sexual though there was nothing overt and nothing symbolic. The music was acceptable until the finale song, which was embarassing.

The closing voice over tells us Orlando is four hundred years old. She does not seem to have lived those four hundred years, but to have lived through them; she seemd to skip decades at a time. I have not read the book: is that in there, or was that a device of the film? Orlando does not seem to have learned anything in all her long life except to understand why she became female. Her transition was magical: she was not made to look like a man when she was a man but I accepted her as a man. Yet she suddenly looked like a woman when she washed her face after first awakening as a woman. I did not know when to expect the transformation; and it was thrilling. I knew the camera would pull back, though I did not expect the full frontal nudity in the mirror. It was not titillating. It was just a statement. I don’t know how they did that, either.

Caffeine

from The Role of Caffeine in Pain Management: A Brief Literature Review

I bought a T-shirt from $6 tees bearing a caffeine molecule in orange on heather blue. After staring at it upside down and mirror-reversed for a day I decided I ought to memorize the structure. I’ve always thought of myself as more visually oriented than word oriented, but after several unsuccessful attempts to remember the shape, I was successful by memorizing a description: “a ring of six connected to a ring of five; the ring of six with alternating nitrogens and double-bonded oxygen, the nitrogens bonded to methane; the shared edge of the rings a double bond; and in the ring of five two nitrogens not next to each other, one double bonded and one with a methane.”

My other favorite drink is Retsina. My wife laughed that I needed a “Retsina-molecule” Tee. Wikipedia says Retsina is flavored with the resin of the Aleppo pine Pinus halepensis, 97.9% of the total collective oil of which, says a paper from the US National Library of Medicine of the NIH, comprises 49 compounds, 65.5% of which are various monoterpenes. Structures vary widely and though all monoterpenes are basically C10H16, so are other compounds, so that formula is both too vague and too boring for a T-shirt.

I suppose I could make her one with Theobromine.

Haibane Renmei

Original undated review (probably 2004):

Melancholy and lovely Anime, a story of redemption and coming of age from Yoshitoshi ABe (Lain, Niea). More info and a review (Dead links.)

Update 3 August 2020:

I don’t remember this Anime at all. I found a reference to it in a diary entry from late 2004. The webpages in the review are gone (tho' the psu.edu one is in the wayback machine.) It is available on crunchroll and funimation. I found a clip of the opening, of Rakka falling with the crow and a very vague memory stirred. I must have liked it and I’d like to watch it again.

Irving Finkel, Assistant Keeper of Mesopotamian script, languages, and cultures

Irving Finkel is a delight. Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures at the British Mueseum; I first encountered him teaching Tom Scott and Matt Gray to write cuneiform with popsicle sticks. A couple of nights ago I watched his lecture at the Royal Institution, magnificently Flanders and Swan: Sumerian a language, not a code - see this beautiful text - see this reconstruction of the ark of the flood - a Babylonian story before it was a biblical - discussed in his book - reconstructed from the description given in the tablet - a complete language, first developed so that unpleasant people could have an accounting of the goods produced by the unhappy people whom they taxed, but in time adapted to express epics and love poems.

Naturally I decided I must immediately drop everything and learn Sumerian (and Akkadian - Babylonian and Assyrian - and the complete diachronic development of cuneiform sign-systems) - resources are abundantly available on-line start here. There are 130,000 artifiacts in the museum says Finkel, mostly unread and scholars are needed to transcribe and interpret them. The CLTK does not yet have Sumerian. Oh how I would like to contribute!

The Werewolf Principle

One of Simak’s best. As often with Simak, a blend of science and fantasy in the service of the question of identity and what it means to be human. Poetic, gentle, yet thrilling in over-all tone.

Brennan B2

The Brennan B2 is a delightful piece of gear. And I have today finished loading my entire CD collection onto it.

The project began a few years ago when my pair of Sony mega CD changers, complicated mechanisms that lasted many more years than I had any right to expect, finally gave up the ghost (likely it was just worn out belts but I’m not sufficiently mechanically inclined to investigate.) I pulled all 600+ CDs and stored them in half-width jewel cases. I began to rely on streaming services for music. I had long dreamed of ripping the collection but the job was daunting.

When I found out about the Brennan, which has a built-in CD, I decided that each time I pined for an old CD I would rip it. But I’m a completist at heart, and I was concerned for the CD mechanism on such a large job, so I got an external drive, and figured I’d do the collection in batches over a few weeks… months… it turned into years. Meanwhile, I played the music back through Sonos speakers, using the Brennan as a NAS.

The job is complete today! The Brennan goes to the living room where I can hook it up to the receiver and play music by means the Brennan’s fine DAC through my beautiful old Boston Acoustic speakers with the perfect mid-range response. How I’ve missed that sound!

Clock Module

Here’s the clock module for Ben Eater’s 6502 kit- first electronic project since childhood, when I built a multimeter from a kit as part of the Heathkit electronics course. I soldered that, and proudly affixed the the little brass plaque they’d engraved with my name. It has been too long since I played with hardware. Assembling this breadboard circuit was satisfying.